Politics

Have I ever mentioned how I really can’t stand conspiracy theorists? I especially can’t stand them when they claim an incident where innocent lives are lost is a ‘false flag‘. These people, who lack common sense and completely disregard Occam’s Razor, think that every mass shooting is a false flag. The only good thing about the tin foil hat crowd is when they make their outlandish claims public, sane people can completely disregard anything else that comes out of their mouths.

For example, take Scott Baio. Yes, that Scott Baio. Chachi himself. This mental midget retweeted a conspiracy theorist’s photo claiming that the mother of Vickie Soto and the mother of Heather Heyer were the same person. For those of you who may not know, Vickie Soto was a teacher who was killed during the school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, while Heather Heyer was the woman was struck by a car and killed by a neo-nazi at the recent protest in Charlottesville.

After a well-deserved social media backlash Baio deleted the tweet, then half-heartedly apologized for the tweet saying he retweeted it but didn’t post it, which is somehow better according to him.

To make matters worse, a mother of child who died at Sandy Hook tweeted at Baio’s wife Renee about the matter. Renee Baio responded to Nelba Márquez-Greene with the following…

This is what this insane harpy told a woman who lost her 6-year-old daughter, Ana Márquez-Greene, at Sandy Hook. All because the Baios are stupid enough to believe whatever bullshit some random troglodyte on Twitter happens to post.

If you believe things like 9/11 was an inside job or Sandy Hook didn’t really happen, seek psychiatric help before you have to be forcefully committed. Then again, you probably think any kind of mental healthcare is part of a conspiracy between big pharma and Obamacare to steal your thoughts. Trust me, no one wants them.

Of course when someone puts the images of guns and school together you can’t help but think of school shootings, but is this really worth our outrage? Of course this wasn’t done intentionally by WalMart but you’d think the store personally went to school children and handed them guns the way some people are overreacting. For all we know it could have been done by some customer who thought they were funny, and to be honest, I did chuckle a little, but I can have a dark sense of humor at times.

What we should be outraged about is how some parents refuse to check on their kids activities, especially when there are guns in the home. We should be outraged about parents who refuse to get their children psychiatric help because the parents think they’ve somehow failed as a parent if they admit their child has a problem. We should be outraged about the generations of children we’ve raised to be emotional marshmallows whose first response is to turn to violence when things don’t go their way for whatever reason. But no, let’s rage at WalMart instead since they’re obviously the reason behind school shootings.

Yeah, I know. I’m not exactly prompt with this story. For all I know everyone has moved on to something new to be outraged about. Well, since I still have this idea rolling around in my head I’m still going to post about it.

I only have a passing knowledge of Milo Yiannopoulos. From what I understand, he’s a right-wing shit stirrer who’s been banned from Twitter for what some have viewed as hate speech. I also knew that he worked for right-wing ‘news’ site Breitbart. However, right now I could not care less about Mr. Yiannopoulos’ politics, but more about what he said that has brought about his possible downfall.

On a podcast that Mr. Yiannopoulos appeared on during early 2016, he reportedly said some things about sex and consent that were very controversial. Here’s some of what he said courtesy of New York Magazine…

In the homosexual world particularly, some of those relationships between younger boys and older men the sort of coming of age relationships, relationships in which those older men have helped those young boys to discover who they are and give them security and safety and provide them with love and a reliable — and sort of a rock where they can’t speak to their parents.

The law is probably about right, that’s probably roughly the right age, I think it’s probably about okay, but there are certainly people who are capable of giving consent at a younger age. I certainly consider myself to be one of them.

You’re misunderstanding what pedophilia means. Pedophilia is not a sexual attraction to somebody 13 years old, who is sexually mature. Pedophilia is attraction to children who have not reached puberty. Pedophilia is attraction to people who don’t have functioning sex organs yet who have not gone through puberty.

Now I am not saying that Mr. Yiannopoulos is a pedophile, but to play armchair psychologist, I don’t think it’s necessarily his fault that he believes what he said. While I’m not trying to make excuses for what he said, Mr. Yiannopoulos claims that he was a victim of sexual abuse. By saying what he did, he could be trying to rationalize what happened to him. It’s possible he could be harboring feelings of guilt that he was abused and this could be his way of dealing with it. However, Mr. Yiannopoulos was grossly irresponsible by saying this in public.

This line of thinking is very much on par with a lot of sexual predators. I have received numerous comments on this very website from people, mostly men, trying to excuse preying on underage children by using the ‘this technically isn’t pedophilia’ argument. Here is an e-mail I once received to a similar effect…

Hey Trench – I enjoy reading your blog but thought I’d point out an error in your terminology.

You commonly refer to men attracted to teenage girls as ‘pedophiles’ when this is not the case. Attraction to teenage girls is considered ‘hebophilia’ which actually is not considered a mental disorder, as it is biologically normal to be attracted to post-pubescent individuals.

We as a society have chosen to infantilize teenagers when it comes to sex but treat them as adults when they commit crimes. It seems a little out of whack to me. Thoughts?

The e-mail writer is incorrectly referring to hebephilia, which is defined as the sexual attraction to early pubescent children ages 11 to 14. The e-mail writer and Mr. Yiannopoulos are far from the first people to ever make these kind of claims. However in the modern lexicon you can’t say “It’s not pedophilia, but…” and not expect there to be push-back from the public.

Since Mr.Yiannopoulos’ comments were brought to light, he was cancelled as a speaker at a large conservative event, lost a book deal, and was fired or resigned from Breitbart, depending on who you talk to. Personally I believe Mr. Yiannopoulos deserved the public backlash that he has received. As I’ve said many times before, while you may be entitled to freedom of speech you’re not entitled to be protected from the repercussions of said speech.

The worst part in this is that Mr. Yiannopoulos’ followers are legion. They are dedicated almost to the point of fanaticism. By making these statements he seems to legitimize this behavior to his internet lackeys. My fear is that he has almost ordained a new generation of men, since his followers are mostly male, that follow the ‘old enough to bleed, old enough to breed’ axiom. Not only that but there’s a great chance that he’s attracted more followers that already follow the ‘it’s not technically pedophilia’ mantra. That’s obviously one of the last things this country needs.

Brian Michael Jenkins, a terrorism expert at the non-partisan RAND Corporation, has come out and said that if President Trump’s immigration ban had been implemented in the wake of 9/11 it wouldn’t have saved one American citizen. Mr. Jenkins is quick to point out that no foreign agitator has been responsible for the so-called jihadist attacks that have taken the lives of close to 90 people in the US. These attacks were either carried out by American citizens or legal permanent residents, and none were from the seven countries under Trump’s ban.

A number of people seem to think that the ban is discriminatory as it targets largely Muslim nations; I disagree. Trump only sees one color and that color is green, and allegedly gold. Trump is merely playing to his prejudiced voter base while he already looks ahead to the 2020 election, using Muslims as the bogeymen in his plan to get re-elected. Whether he is President for four or eight years, his presidency will mostly be used to make him more money once he leaves office.

I’ve seen people post on Facebook, where civil political discourse goes to die, something to the effect that if you don’t support the ban why not open your home to these refugees. If I had the space and the money I sure as hell would. I can conversely ask that if you support the ban why not drop your family in one of these countries and see how easy it is to try to get them out?

When the military exercise codenamed Jade Helm 15 was first announced some citizens of Texas went nuts with conspiracy theories of martial law and the confiscation of guns. They caused such a clamor that the Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, actually promised these whackjobs that the Texas Guard will watch over the exercise.

Well, guess what kids. Jade Helm has ended and Texas remains free and full of guns. However I’m sure the conspiracy theorists will take credit for keeping Texas free by allegedly exposing the evil government’s plans of rounding up gun owning Texans and holding them against their will in empty Wal-Marts. I’m just thankful that none of these nuts injured or killed a member of our own military.

I guess the tin foil hat crowd will now have to go back to ‘9/11 was an inside job’ until the next ‘false flag’ comes around.

Walter Eugene Litteral, 50, Christopher James Barker, 41, and Christopher Todd Campbell, 30, are accused of stockpiling guns and ammunition, as well as attempting to manufacture pipe bombs and live grenades from military surplus “dummy” grenades, according unsealed criminal complaints released Monday.

The three men all hail from Tex…wait, not Texas? They’re from North Carolina? Gastonia of all places? For those of you who don’t live in the Charlotte, North Carolina, area, like yours truly, Gastonia is a redneck suburb of Charlotte. North Carolina was not even on the Jade Helm 15 map so for these rocket surgeons to start stockpiling arms in response to it just shows how far crazy can reach.

As I am wont to say, if you look for a conspiracy in everything then everything is a conspiracy.

I originally posted about military exercise code-named Jade Helm 15 here. The short version is that a crazy vocal minority in Texas think that the exercise is actually some kind of secret government operation to either declare martial law in Texas or to take their guns or both depending on which crackpot you’re talking to. What makes the situation worse is that when Jade Helm was first announced and the tin foil crowd first complained, Texas Governor Greg Abbot actually acquiesced to this vocal minority of morons and promised that the Texas Guard will monitor the exercises.

As the start of Jade Helm grows nearer I’m beginning to think that maybe the Texas part of the exercise should be cancelled. Not because I believe in any conspiracy theory bullshit but I’m afraid it might put the safety of some of our military members at risk.

I’m afraid that some gun nut will see a member of the military somewhere near his land and decide to take matters into his own hands. Even worst I’m afraid that small ‘militia’ groups may already be forming to go out looking for trouble.

Since the Governor of Texas doesn’t have the balls or the brains to tell some of his constituents that they’re crazier than shit house rats then the US military may want to consider keeping their personnel away from the more armed and brain addled area of the exercise.

I know Facebook isn’t the apex of intelligent political discourse but I was shocked at the amount of people, who I thought were smarter than that, defending the confederate flag. Yes, I know it’s not the official flag of the confederacy, stop being pedantic, and while you’re looking up the definition of pedantic you may want to look up the definition of eponym. So in this year 2015 Anno Domini, or Common Era if you will, let’s take a look of why the traitor’s rag is indefensible. That last part may be a bit of a spoiler.

African Slavery

The Civil War was about slavery. Deal with it. You can take your “War of Northern Aggression” state’s rights bullcrap and stick it up your Stonewall Jackson. The state’s right to own slaves maybe. Slavery was even a cornerstone of the confederate constitution.

Just for grits and giggles let’s say that the war was not about slavery. That still brings us to our next point.

Sedition

The symbolic start of Civil War was when confederates fired upon the Federal Garrison at Fort Sumter in South Carolina. By modern standards if a governor of any state decided to use his or her state’s resources to violently attack a federal military base would that not be looked upon as the act of a traitor? That was rhetorical question, yes, yes it would.

On the losing side

The last time I checked confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant after the Battle of Appomattox. So by flying that flag you’re celebrating the failure of an inferior army. You may as well fly the white flag of surrender in its stead.

So now that the Civil War is over let’s jump ahead about 100 years into the future, the 1960s to be precise. What did the flag stand for then?

Segregation

In the 1960s the flag came back into prominence, for lack of a better term, in Southern states as a symbol of their opposition to the equal right’s movement. To put it more succinctly it was a state government sponsored endorsement of racism. So it should come as no surprise that it’s been adopted by…

Hate Groups

If the flag had any redeeming qualities at this point, which it didn’t, it lost any kind of legitimacy when it was widely adopted by hate groups like the Klan. Someone said to me on Facebook today that men carry out these actions but flags don’t. What that person doesn’t realize is that the flag was being used by those cowards as a symbol of fear and intimidation, some may even call it terrorism. This unfortunate jackass at right is what the flag has come to stand for.

However this is the United States, you have the right to fly that flag as much as you want and I support your right to do so. It will be an indicator on which moronic troglodytes I need to avoid.

Almost around this time last year I posted about how not only were the conspiracy nuts taking over but they were now dictating public policy. In that year it’s gotten significantly worse.

The U.S. military is about to undertake something that it’s done since the beginning of when this country had a military, military exercises. Many sections of the military will; take place in a massive exercise that will span from July to September and from California to Texas that is codenamed Jade Helm 15. A lot of people in Texas are collectively losing their shit over Jade Helm 15 saying that either their guns are going to be confiscated, it’s the start of martial law or that they’ll be sent to the ever so popular FEMA prison camps.

This would actually be hilarious if it wasn’t for one thing. The GOVERNOR of Texas, Greg Abbott, has actually bent over for these crackpots by promising that the Texas Guard will monitor the exercises to make sure they’re on the up and up. God forbid a politician should tell these people that they’re crazier than a shithouse rat. At least a former politician did. Todd Euless, a veteran of the Texas Legislature, wrote a letter to the governor that said he is “horrified that I have to choose between the possibility that my Governor actually believes this stuff and the possibility that my Governor doesn’t have the backbone to stand up to those who do.” He also referred to the lunatic fringe as a cancer on the state. Can’t say I disagree with him.

My question is are these partisan conspiracy nuts? Are they only frothing at the mouth because a black Democrat who’s a ‘secret Muslim from Kenya’ in the White House or did they also go bananas about military exercises when Bush of Skull and Bones was in office?

Let’s look at this logically for a minute. I know that’s a lot to ask from some folks but bear with me. Where is the majority of fighting taking place in the world today? In areas with lots of deserts. What’s mostly between California and Texas? A shit ton of desert.

As an aside when I become president I’m going to initiate Aluminum Hat 1 that will round up all the conspiracy theorists and finally put them in FEMA camps. Then they’ll finally get to be happy by telling everyone they were right all along. It’ll be easy to identify them. Just ask them if 9/11 was an inside job.

As I’ve said before when you look for a conspiracy in everything then everything is a conspiracy. Me? I’d rather go about living my life without fearing an imaginary bogeyman.